Condo F*cks - 'F*ckbook' (Matador) Released 23/03/09

Six albums down the line Condo ****s are still blazing out rock ‘n’ roll grimery with heterosexual abandon. Whether new album ****book is actually a nod to a new fad that’s sweeping The USA of America called Facebook remains to be seen. But if it’s anything like as visceral and all-conquering as the ****s themselves then the UK has something to look forward to.

If you haven’t heard of the CFs before then worry not because you may still recognise some tracks here. They’ve ripped through an album of covers for their ****book, grabbing songs from across the ages and giving them the Condo treatment. They’ve taken everything from the Beach Boys to Richard Hell and pulled no punches.

They feature all three current members of the band Yo La Tengo.

Hang on… that means they ARE Yo La Tengo.

But Yo La Tengo do nice songs, and dreamy songs. Yeh, they are punk rock, they sure ain’t Condo ****s. But they are.

Condo ****s is the side project/alter-ego/schizophrenic realisation of Yo La Tengo’s James McNew, Georgia Hubley (known here as Georgia Condo) and Ira Kaplan (here as Kid Condo) where they indulge their love of the cover, and combine it with a clear desire for the dirty.

****book rocks. It’s gritty and skronky in the extreme. It sounds like they’ve come up with the tracklist at breakfast, recorded it over lunch (using breaks between singing duty to guzzle some petrol and hammers), thought about mastering it at teatime, but instead just released it, and it’s great for it.

Some tracks are brilliantly recognisable – Ira’s and James’ take on the Beach Boys’ Shut Down takes the sheen of the original in cracking style, then Georgia takes lead on a rendition of The Troggs’ With A Girl Like You that makes you want to get up and ‘ba ba ba’ along like it hasn’t gone out of fashion.

In the immortal (who knows whether they actually wrote them, but who cares!) words of The Hartford Advocate, The Condo ****s are “one of the best bands Connecticut has to offer.” Fact.